Battle System

Ever played rock-paper-scissors? The battle system in Fire Emblem behaves much like the triangle hierarchy of attacks in the classic rock-paper-scissors game. There are two sets of weapon triangles. One for physical weapons, and one for magical attacks.

In the realm of physical weapons, the hierarchy goes as follows: swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords. Be aware, however, that there are some weapons that reverse this triangle (such as the lancereaver, which beats axes). It's important to check out enemy units before approaching them to give you a good idea of what to attack with (use the R button to examine enemies).

Throughout your battles, your ally units will earn experience and gain levels with combat. Leveling up your characters is extremely important to success in later levels of Fire Emblem, but forming a powerful squad isn't always as simple as it may seem. Here are some key ideas to keep in mind when strengthening your characters.

All units have a maximum level of 20.

You can promote your units to a new class (with the correct items) once they've reached level 10 or higher. However, it is actually beneficial to wait as long as you can before promoting units, as they earn much less experience once promoted. To earn the highest stats, you'll want to level them up as high as possible before promoting.

Promoting your units not only increases their stats, but often gives them new abilities. Check out the individual characters on the Characters page to get a better idea of the benefits in promoting them.

Level your characters early! It is very important to share the experience from early enemies with as many of your allies as possible. Just because you have a couple of strong units (such as Marcus) doesn't mean that you should kill everyone with those few allies. You need to spend time leveling characters, even if they appear weak to begin with. It'll pay off in the end.

Character Support

While not crucial, the character support ability in Fire Emblem can add to your battle presence if you take the time to fully develop it. You won't always gain a lot from it, but building support can alter the game endings, as well as give you a little edge in combat.

To properly build support, you need to have two characters spend a lot of time standing in adjacent spaces. After a while, you'll notice the "Support" option from the action menu, which will send you into a brief dialogue between the two characters. You can build your support levels up from grade rankings, and the higher the rank the greater the rewards.

Merlinus the Merchant

About midway through the game, if you choose to accept the sidequest in Chapter 13, Merlinus the merchant will join your team. As you should quickly find out, his services are extremely convenient.

With Merlinus, you'll be able to trade items between units and store them in the merchant's shop. You can store up to 100 items, letting you stock up on weapons when given the opportunity, and being able to survive in later missions.

Outside of simply serving as a trading tool for items, Merlinus has uses on the actual battlefield. If you choose to deploy Merlinus before a battle, you'll be able to send items directly to him from the battlefield. If one of your units is carrying his maximum number of items and happens to gain another, instead of having to choose to drop an item you can have it sent directly to Merlinus for safe-keeping. Likewise, while in shops you'll be able to purchase more than simply what your unit can carry, as all extra items will be shipped directly to Merlinus.